Technology

Internet security is a contentious issue at the best of times and none more so than currently, when so many people want to access your personal and confidential materials for nefarious purposes.

It goes without saying that while social media can benefit even the smallest of businesses, it also represents a bigger security threat.

Recently Twitter was hacked and 250,000 user accounts were compromised, or at least the official line is that only 250,000 accounts were compromised. In actuality the figure only represents those accounts that have been identified as having been compromised.

The simple truth is that modern technology is designed to make life considerably easier and easier for us to use and provides greater connectivity and integration than ever before and the cost for this is reduced security.

How many sites do you use that simply plug into your Google, Facebook or Twitter account to login and register?

So if anyone suddenly had backend access to your social media site details that means they also have full access to related sites and personal details.

The other appalling aspect of this is that many users tend to stick with the one password combination and never change, so long term hacking is extremely easy to achieve.

A username/password hacked over two years ago would probably still be accessible.

So what is the answer.

Bearing in mind we like life to be simple, you could use any number of products to better secure your online experience. Dashlane for instance will store and strengthen your passwords for you and can even cloud store your access login’s in case of hard drive failure. The only thing you need to be sure of is that you don’t lose the Dashlane login detail!

The other option is to properly secure the internet. Spotflux is a free to use security bolt-on that masks your online identity without compromising your internet usage. It means that even if you access a site that has been compromised, it will not allow malicious code to penetrate your Spotflux security and your Anti-Virus/Firewalls.

This extra level of security means that even if something nasty got past the gate the hacker would have no idea where and who you are while you deal with the infection.

For simplest security you should consider keeping a notebook of passwords and changing them regularly. It may sound like daft security, but most thieves will steal a computer and hackers will steal data, but rarely would they be able to steal both.

As for your notebook, keep it secure and hidden when not in use. As the old saying goes, if you want to hide a tree, put it in a forest.